This tutorial is meant to show you how to acquire a conduit, which requires a heart of the sea and eight nautilus shells.
Heart of the sea[]
Heart of the sea items cannot be farmed. They generate only in buried treasure chests, which are difficult to find.
Step 1: Underwater breathing[]
Before diving down underwater, a player should secure a way to breathe underwater. This can be done with doors[Java Edition only], turtle shells, water breathing potions, helmets with the Respiration enchantment, and bubble columns.
A simple but time-consuming way to extend your underwater time is to obtain a helmet with the Respiration enchantment. Even one level of Respiration doubles your normal 15-second underwater time to 30 seconds, and each level of Respiration adds another 15 seconds.
You can try fishing until you obtain a book with a Respiration enchantment, and use an anvil to enchant a helmet.
Or, you can find a zombie spawner to create a drowned or zombie farm to get enchanted gold armor in Hard difficulty, which may include a Respiration-enchanted helmet dropped by zombies when they drown or die. If you are playing Bedrock Edition, you can also use this farm to obtain nautilus shells, which are necessary for crafting the conduit.
Step 2: Treasure maps[]
Buried treasure maps can be found in shipwrecks and underwater ruins chests. These structures can be found just about everywhere in oceans, and underwater ruins are usually marked with bubble columns, sea lanterns or drowned.
Optionally, the player can feed a nearby dolphin, which then leads the player to a structure with treasure.
- Shipwrecks
If you are fortunate enough to find a shipwreck in reasonably shallow water (enough for you to dive down, linger for about 5 seconds, and return to the surface), go straight for the map chest. This is located in the lower section of the stern of the ship. You likely have to open a door to get into that section. Open the chest, get the map (not the blank pieces of paper, but the paper with a mark on it), and don't be distracted by anything else. Return to the surface immediately after obtaining the map. If you want to explore the ship, save it for another breath.
Step 3: Following the map[]
Buried treasure maps are usually blank with a white indicator dot. This shows where the player is in relation to the buried treasure. Remember that upward on the map is north and rightward on the map is east. As the player gets closer to the treasure, the indicator dot increases in size until they start filling in map features. Traveling may involve a long boat ride. Upon reaching the red "X" use a shovel to start digging 2×2 or 2×3 around that area to find the treasure chest. A more convenient method is to dig straight down the center of the chunk when at the red "X" (chunk coordinate 9,?,9 in Java Edition, 8,?,8 in Bedrock Edition), because treasure chests always generate in this certain position in a chunk. A buried treasure chest always contains a heart of the sea.
Nautilus shells[]
Depending on your setup, obtaining eight nautilus shells could be tedious.
Method 1: Fishing[]
Fishing is practical and easy, yielding an occasional nautilus shell as a treasure catch. Fishing this may also yield enchanted fishing rods that improve the catch rate and chance of treasure. The odds of receiving a nautilus shell from fishing with an unenchanted rod are 0.7%, so you have to spend a lot of time fishing.
Always fish in open water, otherwise you don't catch nautilus shells or other treasure, you just catch fish and junk. Fishing directly under the sky while it's raining decreases waiting time between bites.
Method 2: Drowned[]
Drowned have a chance to drop nautilus shells, but ease of obtaining them depends on the Edition.
- Bedrock Edition: Drowned have an 8% chance to spawn holding a nautilus shell. If it is holding a nautilus shell in the offhand it is a guaranteed drop. Also, converting zombies into drowned resets the drop counters, giving newly-converted drowned the same chance to spawn with a nautilus shell. Therefore, nautilus shells are most easily obtained conduit ingredient in Bedrock Edition. If you find a dungeon with a zombie spawner, then building a basic flooded dungeon drowned farm is the simplest and most efficient way to produce nautilus shells in Bedrock Edition Survival mode, yielding more nautilus shells than a player would ever need.
- Java Edition: Drowned have a 3% chance to spawn carrying a nautilus shell. If they do, they are guaranteed to drop it. Only naturally-spawned drowned carry nautilus shells; zombies converted to drowned do not.
Method 3: Trading[]
Another way to obtain nautilus shells is via trading with a wandering trader. A wandering trader can spawn anywhere after one in-game day and has a chance of offering a nautilus shell as one of their trades. One nautilus shell costs five emeralds, so obtaining eight nautilus shells require spending 40 emeralds. Despite costing many emeralds, this method is the fastest way to obtain 8 nautilus shells, provided you have a village available as a source of emeralds for trade. However, because the nautilus shell trade is locked after 5 transactions, the player needs to trade with 2 wandering traders that offer nautilus shells to have enough for a conduit, which may take a long time, as not every wandering trader sells nautilus shells.
Prismarine[]
Prismarine can be the most difficult ingredient to obtain if the player has not already defeated an ocean monument. Sources of prismarine or its crafting materials come from ocean monuments and ocean ruins. Prismarine and sea lanterns can also be found as part of underwater ruins, but not every ruin generates sea lanterns or prismarine.
To get started, the top two layers closest to the ocean surface yield 16 prismarine blocks and 4 sea lanterns. If you're lucky, the top of the ocean monument is close to the sea surface. You need only 16 prismarine blocks to construct a minimal activation frame to create an initial conduit. You can also use 180 blocks of sand to surround the top structure completely, allowing you to mine further down to get 12 more prismarine blocks of the top structure. Another way to get prismarine from an ocean monument is with an Aqua Affinity enchanted helmet and a potion of water breathing.
Step 1: Craft a conduit[]
A conduit can be crafted with 8 nautilus shells and heart of the sea. To make it functional, you need a minimum of 16, and up to 42 prismarine or sea lantern blocks. Each ingredient has its own section.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Nautilus Shell + Heart of the Sea |
Step 2: Get temporary underwater breathing[]
An activated conduit.
In order to acquire enough prismarine, the player must secure a way to breathe underwater. The best way is to get into an ocean monument and place a conduit strategically to give the player conduit power. The top of an ocean monument is a 4×4 ring of prismarine. A player can mine the supporting prismarine pillars under this ring for four additional prismarine, to expand the top ring to 5×5. Conduit power from a single 5×5 ring of prismarine is sufficient to enclose the entire monument. This can be constructed near the surface, or from a platform constructed around the top of the monument. The Mining Fatigue effect from the monument's elder guardians greatly lengthens the task of expanding the top ring, so use a good pickaxe.
Once you have the 5×5 ring, put the conduit in the middle to activate it. Once it activates, it grants the Conduit Power effect, which allows the player to breathe indefinitely, see better, and mine faster underwater. Then you can breathe underwater inside a radius that covers the entire monument, allowing you to get more prismarine to move your conduit elsewhere later.
The player can also secure a temporary way to breathe underwater. This can be done with bubble columns, non-solid blocks that cannot be waterlogged (such as doors[Java Edition only]), Respiration enchantment, as well as turtle shells.
Step 3: Obtain prismarine[]
Prismarine can be obtained from the guardians themselves and from the structure of the monument. The guardians can be a nuisance and the mining fatigue from elder guardians can make mining impossible. For these purposes, it is best to bring building materials that can be broken instantly such as slime blocks, scaffolding, or TNT. Killing guardians is much easier if the player has a trident enchanted with Impaling and Loyalty. A Riptide trident or Depth Strider boots are also helpful.
The only way to break the monument structure with elder guardians in the way is to detonate TNT. To do this effectively, place a gravity block such as sand on top of the TNT. When it ignites, it turns into an entity, causing the gravity block to fall inside it. When the TNT explodes, it destroys some of the prismarine and leaves some items. Without the aid of a gravity block, TNT damages mobs without destroying underwater blocks.